多选的烦恼Word文档下载推荐.docx

1、多选的烦恼#“多选”的烦恼#Its an experience common to most Peace Corps volunteers upon their return to the United States. After having spent a couple of years in remote places where consumer choices were limited at best, they go into a grocery store in the U.S. to buy something and end up standing 2）glassy-eyed

2、 in the aisles, paralyzed and overwhelmed by an overload of choice. Faced with an entire aisle full of toothpaste optionsone whitening, one brightening, and one with extra3）fluoride and 4）baking soda ingredientstheir eyes 5）glaze over and they stare, unable to choose or buy anything. #Even without t

3、he Peace Corps background, its a consumer experience I can relate to very well. More than once Ive set out on a shopping mission and realized, after trying on the 12th pair of jeans, shorts, shoes, etc. that I have lost my ability to 6）differentiate or decide. My brain has gone into decision 7）fatig

4、ue, and all I want to doindeed, all I have the ability to dois go home. #Apparently, I am not alone. In her recent book The Art of Choosing, Columbia University business professor Sheena Iyengar cites numerous research studies that indicate an inverse relationship between choice and the ability to d

5、ecide. In the late 1990s, for example, she and colleagues conducted an experiment in a 8）high-end food store in California. On different days, they set up a tasting table of jam, offering each taster a 9）coupon for a dollar off if they bought a jar. On some days, the researchers offered only six typ

6、es of jam. On others, they offered 24 different options. While the 24-jam display attracted more attention and induced more people to stop and look at the jams, （60 percent of incoming store customers stopped at the larger display, versus 40 percent at the smaller display）, the actual sales generate

7、d from the displays were quite a lot greater at the smaller display （30 percent of those who stopped, versus three percent with the larger display）. #Iyengar presents psychological explanations for why we glaze over at too many choices, including the fact that choice is a complex process that requir

8、es that we a） know what we want, b） understand what makes the choices different, and c） can evaluate the 10）trade-offs involved in choice A over choice B. Processing that for six choices is possible. Doing all those mental 11）gymnastics for 24 options is more than our brains can handle. 12）Ergo, we

9、simply walk away. Iyengar says the ideal number of choices most humans can process well is somewhere between five and nine, since thats about the same number of items we can hold 13）concurrently in our short-term memory. #But what really 14）intrigues me are the implications of this process and 15）dy

10、namic for areas of life beyond tangible consumer products. In a recent article called Can There Ever Be Too Many Flowers Blooming?# Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz noted that this same phenomenon can also be seen in “16）speed dating” experiments （where subjects are given three or five minutes to

11、 “interview” a potential date in a group setting before moving on to the next person）. In one experiment, researchers found that more “matches” were made if subjects had eight potential partners to choose from than if they had 20. #So apparently, having too many choices leaves us unable to commit to

12、 any given onein toothpaste, romantic partners, or even 17）401k investment plans. （Consequently, many brokers have learned to organize client choices into descending layers of preferences:# Which of these three?# Which of these next three?# And finally, which of these three?#） #But even more 18）disc

13、oncerting are the implications of this phenomenon for the information industry. Ive already noticed it in myself, and in friends who note that they cant process all the Web sites and 19）bloggers and cable news and opinions out there anymore. Faced with too many choices, they just stop reading, or re

14、vert to the sports page. At first, its delightful to have all that variety. But too much information from too many sources can be like too many kinds of jam. #On one level, it makes me wonder about the whole “page view” business model, which is driving a “more is more” approach to website content an

15、d the online publication industry in general at the moment. What if readers are like the jam-display grocery store customersdrawn to look at all those pages of information options, but too overwhelmed to buy anything afterward?# If they are, then perhaps page views are a 20）counterproductive 21）metr

16、ic. Its certainly possible. #If were suffering from information overload, is there a solution?# Not an easy one, certainly. But Professor Schwartz notes that 22）a plethora of choices makes people more reliant on 23）filterssources or mechanisms that 24）sift through the pile to come up with a smaller number of options for us to 25）contemplate. So perhaps, as happened in the early days of the cable television industry, the rush of